Carphone results cheer

Survives declining handset sales

By John Oates, 15th January 2009

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Carphone Warehouse managed to increase like-for-like sales by 6.5 per cent, and 8.3 per cent in the UK for the 13 weeks ended 27 December.

Best Buy Europe sales were up 3 per cent on a constant currency basis to £1, 010m, like-for-like growth was 6.5 per cent, or down 1 per cent on a constant currency basis. UK revenues were £488m and gross profit was 3.8 per cent.

Like-for-like retail gross profit was down 3.7 per cent including currency fluctuations and gross margin per connection was down - for the full year CPW expects margins to be down 150 basis points.

Charles Dunstone, chief exec at CPW, said: “I regard these figures as a very creditable performance in an extremely challenging environment. We have grown our retail market share...Our broadband business continues to make good progress, with churn falling and ARPUs rising."

He said that given the economic problems the firm needed to balance growth against protecting cash resources and controlling costs. The firm expects to hit City estimates of 12 to 13 pence earnings per share for the year and aims to do about the same next year after investing in its joint venture "big box" with Best Buy.

The ISP business Talk Talk saw revenues falling 2 per cent to £347m but Arpu was up 5 per cent to £23.13. The firm added 37, 000 users in the quarter giving a total of 2.7m.

The structural review of the business continues with the aim of improving management and operational structure, the firm is also looking at improving financial reporting.

Full statement here. ®

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